One Week With Kantan Kanban

It has been just over a week of using the Kanban program, which I’m calling Kantan Kanban (roughly “Easy Kanban”), and I’ve learned a lot. But I don’t have an answer to my core question - does this approach reduce screen time and cognitive load?

When I started working on Kantan Kanban, my hypothesis was that combining a pull-focused task management approach with a display of all in-progress tasks in an “Overview” To Do List could improve on the traditional Kanban approach. By emphasizing task flow, limiting information to only what’s necessary, and deliberately introducing productive friction, I’m testing whether it’s possible to make more progress while reducing screen time and cognitive load.

Lessons so far

First, is the importance of thoughtfully ordering the tasks to be done on a Kanban Board. That gets more complicated in situations like this, with active development - but this is a real use-case and something for me to think about how to handle better in the future.

Learning the best way to estimate times for programming tasks and prioritize bugs and features is something I’m still working on. Looking back on the last week, I spent more time on small quality-of-life issues than was necessary. That I can reflect and notice that now is a good sign, and more experience will further hone my technical judgment.

Can This Program Reach Its Goals?

Last week I said that I doubted I’d have clear a answer on if this experiment worked; now I know - it is too early to say.

The blocks to determining if the program is a success as I see them are:

1. I’m using it to primarily manage work on itself - so I’m looking at it much more than I’d expect in managing “normal” projects
2. Because I’m constantly tweaking the program things are in heavy flux, leading to me going in and adding/removing tasks, changing order, etc. all the time
3. In using it, I think that the two additional pull features I’m prioritizing are more critical to my goals than I thought.

• Automatic pulls within a single board (e.g. completing a “Bug Fix” task automatically moves the “Add Feature” task from To Do to Doing, up to the Work In Progress limit)
• The ability to pull directly from the Overview To Do list (e.g. moves a task from To Do to Doing in the top board, in order, as long as the board is under its Work In Progress limit, so you don’t need to go into the board)

Takeaway

Discipline is a critical component to achieving your goals, in projects and in life.

Often discipline is confused with motivation as the way work is started. Motivation is great, but limited and fickle. But if you put a system in place which enforces discipline, you create a way where you bind yourself to creating progress even when you don’t feel like it.

There are many ways to cultivate discipline, and the best one will be different for each person:

• schedule blocks of time where you focus on one task, where spending the time actively engaged in that task is the main metric
• pick one item (the most important, something energizing, etc.) and just focus on that
• find a partner and try: working together (in person, via Zoom, etc.) either on the same project or not, discussing your goal/deadline so they can ask about progress (and vice versa)

Next Time

I’m close to having automatic pulls in place, which is my immediate focus. Adding pulls from the Overview To Do list is my next highest priority.

Having those in place should help in understanding how this program really works.

After those are done, I think that creating a Python package would be the next large goal. By enabling others to use the program, their views and experiences can help in shaping it into a stronger end product.

Photo credits: Photo by Alex Stone on Unsplash